Review

‘Jane Doe’ is one of those albums that is so unabashedly aware of it’s cathartic nature that despite being so inaccessible and outside the mainstream, has managed to garner itself wide critical acclaim and thrust the band behind it into the spotlight both in and outside indie circles worldwide. Not bad for a hardcore punk band with a love of Slayer and vocals that sound like a tortured animal screaming through a distortion pedal. Heralding from Massachusetts, Converge had released three albums previously to a substantial underground following, having already stapled their name at the forefront of the metalcore genre before ‘Jane Doe’ hit the shelves in September 2001.

This is an album that is about someone who is nothing - an anonymity who has no guise except that of Jane Doe which in itself means nothing; a Jane Doe (or it’s male counterpart John Doe), simply being a name given to an anonymous women or man. It’s a furious assault of Converge’s classic sound; off beat polyrhythmic drumming and complex guitar riffs that support front man Jacob Bannon’s ethereal shrieks and screams which combine into a tumultuous outpour of aggression. Guitarist Kurt Ballou’s work here is equal parts punk, metal and grind core and it’s this mix up that sees Converge standing head and shoulders above other metalcore stalwarts Botch and Coalesce. The four piece literally seem to be locked in battle with their instruments on this most celebrated of achievements and if the music was a physical thing then a similarly physical representation of emotion would be positively bursting from every orifice. This is an everyman’s album packaged into a sprawling mass of flailing instrumentation and heartfelt screaming. Not so everyman after all? Yet every man gets angry or feels torment and/or upset ; this just happens to be his album which he is able to let everything go and scream along to.

1) This is my first review so any relevant or otherwise criticism is appreciated.

2) I know this has been reviewed many times before but I wanted to give my own take on it however similar it may or may not be.

3) I've seen a lot of people claiming that they don't understand how this could possibly be a classic. I appreciate where you're coming from but this is an album where it's value increases tenfold when you associate it with an experience, i.e. I never truly loved this record until severely upset from a break up I shoved this on and it became something else. It's hard to explain but I've loved the record since.

Truly a great review. I found it to be very well-written, yet not overly wordy and pretentious sounding and to be very concise, yet it covered the overall sound and feel of the album quite well. POS'd!

i always had shitty speakers for my car and shitty headphones for my computer, so i thought the problem was those things, but when i got awesome speakers and awesome headphones i realized the production on here is actually pretty shitty